What went wrong? Did you give them too little background? Did they not know what to expect? Did they not know what they could and couldn't do? Often players become quite hesitant when the rules are too hazy.My plan was to create a universe and sort of drop the players in with a little background and let them explore it and find the story, but when I tried to run a test session it didn't seem to work all that well.
I tried to direct them towards certain events, specifically the apparent suicide of a physics professor, but they felt I was just telling them what they couldn't do, rather than suggesting things that they could. And we ended up scaling up the power wayy to quickly too, I want magic to be something truly subtle right up until the very end unless things go very wrong. Found the Player Handbook Sample